Federico Cheever (Deceased)

Robert B. Yegge Excellence in Teaching Award - 2006

Federico Fred Cheever is a Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. After graduating from Stanford University (B.A./M.A81) and UCLA (JD86), and clerking for Judge Harry Pregerson of United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Los Angeles (1986-1987), he came to Denver as an Associate Attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (1987-1989). Between 1990 and 1993, he was an associate at the Denver law firm Faegre & Benson doing commercial and environmental litigation. He began teaching at the University of Denver College of Law in 1993 specializing in Environmental Law, Wildlife Law, Public Land Law, Land Conservation Transactions and Property. Fred briefly left Denver in 2000 to be a Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and in 2002, he served as the DU Law Hughes/Rudd Research Professor. During the summer of 2005, Fred was a Visiting Professor at Northwestern Law School, Lewis & Clark College.. He is also an adjunct professor at the Colorado School of Mines, teaching Environmental Law.
Fred writes extensively about the Endangered Species Act, federal public land law and land conservation transactions. He has recently co-authored a natural resources casebook, Natural Resources Law: A Place-Based Book of Problems and Cases, with Christine Klein and Bret Birdsong (2005). He is currently working on another book Toward a Bigger Picture: Law and Nature on the Wildland Urban Border which considers the intersection of four historically distinct bodies of law: Public Land Law, Land Use Law, Environmental Law and Land Conservation Transactions in the wildland/urban interface.
Over the years, Fred has represented environmental groups in cases under the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act and a number of other environmental laws. While in private practice he also represented regulated parties in disputes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Clean Air Act.